May 26, 2014

a few pictures from this past week
1,2.  Marianne has mastered her new bike in a matter of days.  I wanted to go to a big garage sale last weekend.  Marianne was the only one who wanted to go with me.  I was looking for patio furniture- but lucky for Marianne, all we found was this princess bike for $5 and a helmet to go with it.  I bought it for her, and a doughnut, and she thought she was the luckiest girl on earth.  She was most excited to show off to the other kids.  And though she has always loved her crazy car, she is loving her bike and being able to keep up with the big kids on the street.  We have never had a two year old be able to ride a bike so well.

3-6.  Sam's preschool graduation.  The whole family, minutes Kate who was at school attended Sam's end of year program.  He seemed a bit nervous always looking to the girl next to him for help.  Trying to do his best.  He jumped up when they did the month of the year and you were suppose to when you got to your birthday month-  I hadn't realized until then, that he was the oldest in the class. Each kid got up and Mrs Duke told a bit about the student.  She had such kind thing to say about Sam.  About how he was a dream student who always did what he was told, and how everyone always wanted to sit next to Sam at circle time because Sam is everyone's favorite.  I loved that.

7,8.9  Bethany, and Bethany and Marianne together in the bike trailer.  You can see that Bethy is much more pleased with the idea of a family bike ride.  Marianne actually enjoyed it just fine, she was just sad he didn't get to rider her own bike to the park and had to ride in the trailer.  We spend part of this Saturday morning getting all the bike in tip top shape and then riding to the neighborhood park to play.  It has been a long time since we family bike rode, but with Sam and Kate both finally perfect non training wheel riders, we are looking forward to a summer of riding

10.11 We hiked Dutch Hollow last weekend with the kids.  A new hike.  We packed a little lunch,  and thankfully it was over cast.    I consulted google, and found a hike about 1 mile long that would get us to a nice peak.  So we set out.  The trail was suppose to be a loop, so we kept following it.  We got to the peek and rested and ate our lunch. The kids were excellent troopers.  Super happy without whining.  We could see the entire valley from the peek.  Then we headed down.  I wasn't sure were headed in the wrong way and was a bit worried we were going to have to send Jake to find the way back while I sat on the mountain with four very tired children, but we found our way!  and it was a great hike.  Mostly because the kids were happy and looking at all the plants, disappointed they didn't run into a bear, and excited about the lunch.

12. 13  Sunday church.  Marianne is getting older by the minute.  I let her wear her hair down in a headband for church and suddenly she looked both adorable and way to old all at once.  Then Kate and Sam wanted a picture too, and why not, my kids have ketchup and watermelon all over them most the time and their hair is hardly combed once a day, but on Sundays we manage to clean up nice.  It is actually important to me that the kids look nice on Sunday, and me too, mostly because we spend the week in play clothes and not doing hair.  I have cute kids- and they are cute all the time, but I like them better with clean faces and matching shoes.